Optimistic prediction for N.Z. lamb

Press, 18 February 1980, Page 7

Optimistic prediction for N.Z. lamb

PA Wellington Given the right balance of markets, . lamb would prove in future to be a bigger income-earner for New Zealand than ever before, said the chairman of the Meat Board (Mr Charles Hilgendorf) in the board’s annual report. He said that the tonnage of lamb available for export was rising, but the obvious question was whether this could be marketed without weakening prices. The contract with Iran for the supply of about 50,000 tonnes of lamb this season, and 200,000 tonnes over a four-year period, was an indication of what could be achieved. "Lamb market diversification, and its development through promotion, has been an expensive undertaking for the board over the last 25 years, but the rewards are • not becoming apparent,” Mr Hilgendorf said. However, Britain was still by far the most important lamb market, for New Zealand and would ' remain so because no country or group of countries was capable of ab-

sorbing 200,000 tonnes of New Zealand lamb the British ate annually. “That is why the board has worked so hard to ensure that a common sheepmeats regime in the E.E.C. doesn’t brutalise our trade, and also why the board continues to invest most of its manpower and promotion expenditure in Britain,” Mr Hilgendorf said. On a less optimistic note, Mr Hilgendorf said that the meat export industry was beset with such serious cost-increase, problems that New Zealand itself was the real front line. . The producers, the freezing industry, and the exporters had demonstrated their physical ability to expand production and overcome the challenge of processing and shipping 720,000 tonnes of meat in a climatically restricted period, he said. Now it was up to the Government to control the economy to avoid more excesses. Mr Hilgendorf described the season, which ended last September 30, as one that virtually went from boom to bust and back again, and in doing so

severely tested the confidence of producers and exporters. Even so, record receipts of $1628 million for meat and by-products were returned to New Zealand. Perhaps the most important lesson of the season was that the industry now had the kind of structure it needed to ensure resilience, Mr Hilgendorf said, and that was an ability paramount for the future because New Zealand would undoubtedly continue to be subjected to sharp market vagaries. “The fact is that there is no such thing any longer as a predictable meat market,” he said. “It may be seen that in these times of accelerating change the board is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to project the interests of the producers. In the discharge of that responsibility, the board is clearly becoming more closely connected with different elements of the industry, most often — as with the Iranian contract and the purchase of the Kaiapoi freezing works — as the initiating or catalytic agent making such changes possible.”